The Verizon Droid Campaign: Love It or Leave It?

Though it has been out for more than a month, an incidental comment about Verizon’s Droid campaign made today by our Director of Media Integration triggered a torrent of comments from our designers. The debate: is the Droid campaign cool? Well targeted? Creepy? Here’s what we think. Let us know what YOU think in the comments section below.

From Patrick Boegel:

This is a nice update article on a service we have already discussed a bit, Jack Dorsey’s Square, but of even more interest is the Verizon Droid ad that is running below the end of the story copy.  It contains a commercial for Droid, links to the branded Twitter account and Facebook fan page, as well as a scrolling list of articles reviewing the product.  These are the ads we heard about being developed by Federated Media. Very engaging.

From Ron Ladouceur:

I can’t get over the excessively creepy/macho/90s techno/Lord of the Rings “towering eye” goofy look tone and feel of the Droid campaign. Dark and geeky. When mashed up with the Twitter bird, it comes off as downright Web 1.0. Given the Verizon backbone, I imagine the product will be successful. But the ethos seems to be such a throwback.

Designers, any of you have an opinion on this?

From Simona Bortis-Schultz:

The droid campaign doesn’t appeal to me either and seemed old fashioned… but perhaps the demographic they are targeting really digs the droid and the “creepy/macho/90s techno/Lord of the Rings ‘towering eye’”… it’s perhaps targeting male generation x-rs, who were in their element in the 90s?

From Beth Mickalonis:

The LTF seems like it is targeting a “PC” crowd (those people that are anti-Mac, gamers) I know a few of them and I think this is the smart phone that would appeal to them based of the anti-Mac theory alone.

From Ivan Marrero:

I can’t stand their new ads. Seems they’re reaching for a new angle – something drastically different than Apple’s iPod campaign.   They end up doing something that might have been cool 10 years ago. Kind of sad and dorky. I have to say they did get me excited with their teaser ads.

From Ron Ladouceur:

I think Simona’s analysis is exactly correct. If you’re going to fight the iPhone, you need to stake a position in opposition to stand out. Apple being so “gender neutral” and “age neutral” leaves little room. Go for the boys!

From Maura Lilley:

It reminds me of the 1984 Apple TV spot. But not in a cool retro way…

From Greg Johnson:

Agreed. It’s the anti- (iPhone, bubbly, gadgety, doohickey) campaign. Personally, I don’t particularly care for the Droid campaign either. However, knowing how popular the dark Transformer/Terminator/Star Trek movies have been, someone must know something about the people who are scooping these things up. Note: The phone itself is actually pretty neat (not dark and menacing at all)

From Michael Rodgers:

I pretty much agree… By marketing themselves so overtly techy/anti-Apple, they will absolutely attract the iPhone-haters – but they would have gotten those people no matter what. This campaign will do nothing for them when it comes to stealing current iPhone users away.

All that being said, it’s also a campaign that was destined for early success (see all the stories hyping its “huge sales numbers”). So many people have been waiting for the iPhone (or similar) to go to Verizon, they will flock early. The real question will be if anyone is buying this phone in 2 months.

And yes, I also hate the campaign.

Incidentally, it appears we’re not the only ones with strong opinions on Droid’s marketing… plenty of people out there either love it or hate it.

What do YOU think?